Success Stories

Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville Increased Robot Utilization by 45%

45% Increase in robotic minutes compared to the previous period

Positive Feedback from surgeons was overwhelming

Deferred Capital expenditures on additional robots

Summary

Baptist Health is a nonprofit, mission-driven healthcare system in the greater Jacksonville, Florida area. The system includes five Magnet-designated hospitals with 74 operating rooms and 14 endoscopy suites. Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville is the flagship hospital, with 513 beds, 4,849 team members, and 18,529 surgeries performed annually.

Profile

5-hospital health system

74 ORs, 14 endoscopy suites in health system

513-bed hub medical center

18,529 surgical cases performed per year in medical center

Problem

Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville wanted to improve its robot utilization so that surgeons could more easily access robots and make the most of these expensive assets. Historically, the hospital’s main OR allocated its three robots on a first come, first served basis. The Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville team had previously tried to change how robotic time was allocated, but gaining consensus from surgeons and leadership proved challenging. Physicians were making additional capital requests for new robotic equipment. Leaders believed these requests were unnecessary but they lacked the necessary data on utilization and equipment needs.

Solution

Perioperative leadership at Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville partnered with LeanTaas to deploy iQueue for Operating Rooms to gain insight into robot utilization, optimize these expensive assets, and develop a new proposal for allocating robot time. Using historical data and leading practice as a guide, they developed a new block schedule that assigned designated robotic block time to surgeons with significant robotic volume. This ensured open robotic time was also available and easily requestable only by surgeons who had robotic cases ready to schedule.

Greater visibility into robot usage and new policies sparked impressive results.

We’ve seen great success using the iQueue product to enable our operations and process improvement teams to drive visibility and action across the health system.

Amy Cate Huveldt

Vice President of Performance Excellence at Baptist Health